


Quiet

by darlingargents



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Minor Eddie/Richie and Bev/Ben, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-02 06:16:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21156968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlingargents/pseuds/darlingargents
Summary: Sometimes the quiet moments are louder than anything else.Or, five moments before and one moment after.





	Quiet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [evewithanapple](https://archiveofourown.org/users/evewithanapple/gifts).

> Warnings for canon-typical smoking and drinking (including underage smoking), canon-typical misogyny/misogynistic language, and less-than-canon-typical homophobia, of the "internalized" variety.

_ 1988  
spring rain _

Bev is smoking outside the school around second period when Richie Tozier comes outside. It’s raining, and there’s only a tiny alcove where the roof juts out and you can stay dry; Richie is rapidly getting soaked. Rain is soaking through the shoulders of his sweater and he’s taken off his glasses, which makes him look both older and younger.

She’s never noticed him much — well, as much as you can not notice someone who gets detention every other class and never shuts their mouth — and what little thought she’s given him was dismissive. But he hasn’t seen her yet, and as she watches, he rubs his hands over his eyes like he’s trying to wear off his eyelids, and reaches down to his jean pocket for his glasses. When he lifts them, his hands are shaking.

“Do you want a smoke?” she says, and has the pleasure of watching him physically jump.

“_Fuck_.” He pulls off his glasses again — it’s raining too hard to see through them — and steps under the alcove. He’s right in her space, but for once Bev finds she doesn’t mind.

“Do you? You look like you could use it,” she says, and he glares at her before nodding. She reaches for the pack — four left — and pulls one out. Lights it for him and hands it over.

He takes a drag, and starts coughing his lungs out, his skinny arms flailing and nearly taking Bev’s eye out with the lit end of the cigarette. She jumps out of the way and finds herself standing in the rain as he coughs himself out. “_Fuck_,” he says again, and Bev can’t stop herself from laughing.

“Give it here,” she says, stepping back under the alcove, and he hands it over without a word — a first, she’s sure. She stubs it out against the dumpster, above a scribbled Sharpie graffiti that says MRS. KENDALL SUCKED MY COCK. Mrs. Kendall teaches English and Bev thinks she’s about 70, so she’s unconvinced at the accuracy of the graffiti.

Of course, half of the other ones involve her, so it doesn’t bother her in comparison.

She tucks the burned cigarette back in the package and looks back at Richie “Trashmouth” Tozier, who is trying to dry his glasses on the edge of his shirt and mainly smudging them. “Are you skipping class?”

“Me? Never.” He puts his glasses back on, squints for a moment, and seems to accept they’re not going to get cleaner. He shoves his hands in the back pockets of his jeans and looks up at her. “Come here often?”

She shrugs. Her cigarette is almost done; she takes one last drag and stubs it out, this time right over the E in her name. I FUCKED BEV MARSH, this one says, with a crude stick-figure drawing. She drops the butt to the ground, where it joins the carpet of cigarette butts at her feet. “Only when it’s raining. There are better places when it’s not.”

Richie leans against the wall. “Are you going back to class?”

She would be, normally; she has a bathroom pass and there’s only so long she can push her luck. But, well… if she claims feminine issues, Mr. French won’t say a word.

“Not yet.” She kicks clear a spot on the ground and sits down. It’s on a bit of a slope away from the school, so the spot is dry even as the rain pours down around them; it really is a comfortable spot. After a moment, Richie sits down beside her. This close, she can see how red his eyes are, even through his glasses. His hair is a mess, not helped by the rain, there’s a brown spot on the front of his sweater, and on his wrist she can see what almost looks like a bruise.

He doesn’t look like he wants to talk about it, whatever it is. So she thinks back to the most recent teacher gossip she’d heard about, and just starts talking. He doesn’t speak much — again, something she’s certainly never seen before and would bet on never seeing again — but she can feel whatever’s weighing him down get lighter and lighter.

*

_ 1989  
molly ringwald _

“That _ fucker,_” he spits, staring at the bruise on his face in the mirror. “Fuck him. He broke Eddie’s fucking _ arm_, he’s the reason we’re all here — fuck him!”

“You might break something if you keep screaming like that.” Bev is digging through Richie’s parents’ medicine cabinet, past a dozen half-empty bottles of Pepto-Bismol and Advil and Tylenol, and eventually she unearths a bottle of rubbing alcohol and cotton pads. “Sit down.”

He sits down on the closed toilet without another word, but he’s still clearly angry; his hands keep clenching into fists and releasing. There are cuts on his hand from stopping his fall on the asphalt, and he’s reopening them. Bev washes her hands, soaks one of the cotton pads in alcohol, and starts patting the cut on his face. He hisses through his teeth, biting down on one of his fingers. Bev rubs it until it seems clean enough, and then presses a band-aid over it. She tosses the cotton pad, gets another, and does the cuts on his hands.

“Your nails are filthy,” she comments as she puts away the rubbing alcohol. He shrugs, picks at one of them as he watches her.

“Why are you helping me?”

She pauses. She’s not even really sure. She’s mad at him, even. She thinks he’s wrong, and that they shouldn’t be splitting apart, and that things are going to get worse, but—

“I know you miss Eddie,” she says, and he goes pale so quickly that she almost wants to check his blood pressure. “I thought you might be worried about him. And I didn’t think you’d want to be alone.”

“I’m not,” he says, and then winces. “I mean, I am, but he’ll be fine, right? His mom will take care of him, and lots of people break their arms, and it’ll be fine, and I’ll see him when school starts and the clown won’t—”

Bev is pretty sure she realizes he’s crying before he does.

She sits on the bathroom counter and lets him cry into his hands, takes his glasses when he pulls them off, and eventually, he takes her hand.

His nails are still filthy. It’s okay.

*

_ 1989  
street fighter _

Richie hasn’t been back to the arcade since that day.

Things have been okay since then. They defeated the clown, he’s made up with his friends. Everyone is safe. Bev is going away, which isn’t good, but at least she’ll be safe.

It’s okay, but it doesn’t feel okay.

He watches the arcade from across the street. Kids go in and out. He doesn’t know who he’s waiting for, or who he thinks he’ll see — Henry is gone, waiting for his trial in prison and, apparently, is a raving lunatic. Not that he wasn’t one before, but now that he’s killed his father and his friends, it’s a little more obvious.

(Richie still remembers the first time he saw the _ H _carved into Ben’s stomach. He’s always known that Henry was crazy, capable of all kinds of fucked-up things — he’s been on the receiving end of plenty of them — but that had made his skin crawl. Someone who could do that — well. It’s probably a good thing for everyone that Henry is gone.)

A boy with blond, curly hair comes out of the arcade and Richie’s stomach drops. He moves back, bumping into a woman pushing a baby carriage, who swears at him as she shoves past. The boy lifts his head and it’s someone from a year above him in school, someone he’s never spoken to.

_ What were you expecting, Tozier? _

His fingertips tingle, just a little.

“Hey, stranger.”

He doesn’t jump. He calmly turns and sees Beverly, leaning against a telephone pole, smoke rising from the tip of her cigarette, one brow raised.

“I thought you left already,” he says when he finds his words. She shrugs and takes another drag of her cigarette, stepping over to stand next to him.

“My aunt’s on her way. I’m walking around a bit. The real question is, why are you staring at the door to the arcade?”

“I spent all my allowance,” he lies. “And I don’t have any tokens left.”

Bev just looks at him for a moment, and then puts the cigarette between her teeth and digs through her pockets. She pulls something out and holds out her fist to him. When he looks down, she opens her hand, and four arcade tokens glint in the sun.

“I have a few. Won’t get another chance to use them. Want to go?”

The actual answer is no, because the idea of stepping through those doors again makes Richie feel physically ill. Henry’s words still ring in his ears, and it doesn’t matter that he’s in jail, miles away, behind bars and incapable of hurting him. _ Get out_, he’d said, and Richie did. And he’s stayed out.

“Come on,” she says, “what’s the worst that could happen?”

“I could get too high of a score and break the machine,” he says, and it’s weak, but she laughs anyway. He actually really likes her laugh. He hasn’t heard it much. “Fine. Let’s go.”

“I should be going back—”

“Come with me,” he says, not quite desperately. He doesn’t think he can walk through those doors again by himself. She studies him for a moment, a knowing look in her eyes, and then nods.

Richie opens the door for her and lets her go first. When he steps inside, it’s cooler and darker than the street, and his eyes take a moment to adjust. He scans the whole room, and his heart doesn’t stop racing until he doesn’t see what he’s looking for.

“What do you want to play?” Bev asks, wandering towards the machines. A few are free, and he’s looking for one that he’s actually good at — unfortunately, that eliminates most of them — when she calls, “What about this one? It’s two-person. Street fighter?”

His heart stops.

She glances back at him, one hand on the machine. The screen is blinking the high scores, and his name is third on the list. It was the second, last time he was here. “You’re clearly good at it.”

“Sure,” he manages, and follows her.

It takes him a few minutes to get back into the rhythm of the game. He shows Bev the basics and she picks it up quickly. They use up all four of the tokens, and by the end, Richie is smiling. He hasn’t beaten his high score, but he’s getting there.

She leans on the machine as it beeps to signal the end of the game and looks over at Richie. “I should probably go. My aunt might already be here.”

“Drive safe,” Richie says, because he’s not sure what else to say. She grins at him, and then pulls him into a hug. He’s not expecting it, but it feels nicer than he expected.

“Hang tight,” she says as she pulls away. “See you later.”

She walks out, and Richie watches her go. He reaches into his pocket. He has five dollars.

He buys more tokens, and plays another game.

*

_ 1990  
portland _

The Toziers go to Portland a few times a year, and it’s on one of these trips, in mid-October, that Richie sees Bev for the first time in over a year, sitting at a bus stop across the street with headphones on and a sketchbook in her lap. He’s walking down the sidewalk and stops dead at the sight of her red hair — longer now, almost brushing her shoulders.

“Richie?” his mother says, raising a brow at him. They’re walking back to the car, parked on the edge of town so they don’t have to pay for parking.

“I’ll walk back,” he says, which isn’t really what he meant to say, because it’s easily an hour’s walk back to his aunt and uncle’s house. His mother laughs a little in disbelief.

“It’s almost dinnertime, Richie, we really should get back.”

Bev looks up from her sketchbook, and somehow, her eyes find his within seconds. She blinks in surprise, and Richie turns back to his parents. “I’ll hurry. Please?”

“Well…” His mother glances at his father, who shrugs, indifferent. “Alright. Stay safe. You know the number, right? Call if you need a ride.” They’re gone a moment later. Richie checks for cars, sees none, and walks across the street to Bev.

“Hey,” he says, hesitating. She’s looking at him, but hasn’t taken off her headphones. He worries, for a moment, that she doesn’t recognize him, until she smiles and pulls off the headphones. She closes her sketchbook before he can get a good look at what she was drawing.

“Richie?” she says, and he smiles. She stands and puts the sketchbook into her backpack, beside her on the bench, before standing up and pulling Richie into a hug. It’s a surprise, for a moment — he hasn’t been hugged much, or maybe at all, for a long while — but he returns it after a moment of surprise. She pulls away after a moment. “What are you doing here?”

“Visiting,” he says. “How have you been?”

“Good,” she says, tucking her hair behind her ear. “No one here has ever heard of me, so school’s actually not terrible.”

“That’s good.” Richie’s high school experience has not improved — well, the fact that Henry and his gang aren’t around has cut down on a lot of it, but he’s always been an outsider. A loser. That hasn’t changed just because the most vocal bullies are gone.

“How is everyone?”

“Uh, good. I mean, Ben moved away.”

“Oh.” She frowns a little. “I was going to go back sometime and see you guys. I just never managed to find the time.”

Richie’s not sure what to say to that. They haven’t spent much time together since that summer. The memories of it have faded into a haze of fear and pain, and while he and Eddie and Stan and Bill still spend time together, Ben is gone and Mike doesn’t go to school with them so it’s harder to keep up. And they don’t spend a lot of time as a group. There’s something when they’re all together, something uncomfortably real, or something unspoken that none of them can vocalize.

It’s strange. For a moment, he didn’t even recognize Bev. And when he did, he almost forgot her name.

“Well,” he says, “I’m sure everyone would be glad to see you.”

“I don’t think I can,” she says. “My aunt and I are moving soon. To New York.”

“Oh.”

“There’s a design school that I’m probably going to — well, maybe, if I can get in. But she’s moving for her job anyway.”

“That’s cool.” He’s not sure what else to say. The happiness of seeing her is being eclipsed by trying to remember how they even knew each other.

She bites her lip. “Do you want to get something to eat?”

There’s a tiny cafe that’s not too expensive a block away, and they get food. The conversation is stilted and strange at first, but it gets better and somehow keeps going until they lose track of time. By the end, Bev is laughing at an anecdote about the high school and Eddie shouting down a teacher who wasn’t following safety codes. (He thinks he’s talking about Eddie too much, probably, but Bev doesn’t seem bothered — she just smiles a little strangely every time Richie circles back to him.) When they emerge back onto the street, it’s been a while, and it’s starting to get dark. Richie had called and told his aunt that he wouldn’t be back for dinner, and was met with indifference. He’ll walk back.

Bev checks the bus schedule and says that another bus is coming in ten minutes, and Richie waits with her. When it finally pulls up, five minutes late, she turns to him and there’s a moment of quiet, unspoken sadness. Richie is sure she feels it too.

“See you,” she says, and Richie is sure that he won’t. Not for a long, long time. “Tell the others I said hi.”

“I will,” he says, and she smiles at him and gets on the bus. He walks back to the house, his fingers going numb in his jacket pockets. His parents and aunt and uncle don’t respond to his greeting when he looks into the living room; they all look halfway to drunk. He goes up to the sewing room, where his air mattress is, and lies down.

He’s sad, about something he doesn’t understand, but somehow, he’s smiling.

*

_ 2001  
trashmouth _

Bev doesn’t normally go to comedy shows. Pretty much never, actually. But she got free tickets to this one — some sort of promotional thing, someone new to the standup scene, and what can she say, she has a soft spot for people trying their best.

And she’s in Chicago for a convention and she has nothing to do tonight except sit in her hotel room, so she might as well, really.

She has pretty good seats, near the front but not close enough that she’s likely to get picked on unless she does something obnoxious. The theatre is more than half full, with twenty minutes to go before the start time, which is a good sign, hopefully. She eats about half of the bag of candy she bought in the lobby as she waits for the show to start. Finally the lights dim and a voiceover announces Richie Tozier.

The hour goes by fast. The comedian is pretty good — not really Bev’s type of humour, too many girlfriend jokes and cruder than she likes — but there are bits that slip through that make her genuinely laugh, a few impressions that are spot-on hilarious.

Near the end, he talks about his childhood. He relays a funny anecdote about a bully and greywater and a rock fight, doing a physical impression of being knocked on his ass by a flying rock, and Bev’s heart starts to hammer. She can feel something — her socks feel almost damp, she can see sunlight and trees when she closes her eyes.

“And I told him — Mullet — to go fuck himself, and he was on the fucking ground and couldn’t do shit about it,” he says, to uproarious laughter, and Bev thinks, _ no, you told him to go blow his dad and called him an asshole _, and she presses her fingers to her forehead, where a headache is spreading like a tumor under her skin.

The show ends a few minutes later and Bev doesn’t move as the theatre begins to empty. She’s massaging her temples and wondering when she started shaking. When she finally leaves, she’s the last person, and the lobby is almost empty. Out on the street, she lights a cigarette with shaking hands, and as she tries to get the thing going, she almost misses someone ducking out the stage door.

“Hey,” she says, not even aware of choosing to speak, and he turns around. It’s Richie Tozier, long and lanky in a leather jacket, his hands in his jacket pockets and a little folded in on himself, like he doesn’t want anyone to look at him.

“I didn’t think I was famous enough for someone to want a picture,” he says, and she laughs despite herself. Her headache is fading a little.

“I just wanted to say, good show,” she says. It’s not strictly true, actually — but she thinks that he might have a writer, and the parts that she didn’t like all seemed a little like he was reading them off a cue card. The parts she liked felt like they were his. She might be totally wrong, but she thinks she’s onto something with that.

“Thanks,” he says. “I fucked up some of the jokes.”

“Still pretty good.”

He squints at her through his comically large glasses. “Do I know you?”

“I don’t know,” she says, and her hands are shaking again. She puts the cigarette between her teeth and breathes in the smoke. She doesn’t smoke much, anymore — well, still pretty regularly, but not as much as she did in high school. She hasn’t felt like she _ needed _ one for a while. Not like this.

“Huh,” he says. “I don’t know either.”

For some reason, Bev starts laughing. She’s shaking, her headache is coming and going, and she feels uprooted, almost unsure where she even is. After a moment, he starts laughing too. They’re standing out on the street, people passing them, as they laugh so hard they almost cry.

When they finally stop, she leans against the wall of the theatre. Her cigarette has gone out, mostly unsmoked, and she tosses it into a trash can.

“Want to get a drink?” he asks, and then pauses. “Not — not like that. Just a drink.”

“Sure,” she says. “Know anywhere good?”

He does. They go to a tiny hole-in-the-wall place a few blocks away. The drinks are good, strong, and cheap, and the potato skins he orders are delicious. Bev should be getting back to her hotel and getting to sleep — she needs to be up in the morning — but as it gets later and later, and they keep talking about nothing at all, and they demolish the potato skins and then the wings and jalapeño poppers, and Bev feels more at home than she has in years.

When she finally goes back to her hotel room, it’s two in the morning. And she’s pretty sure she just had one of the best nights of her life with someone she doesn’t even know, just talking for hours.

By the morning, she’s almost forgotten. By the time she’s back home, she has completely.

*

_2016_  
_ to have and to hold _

Six months after Derry, Bev gets married for the second (and last) time. It’s a quiet ceremony, only for the people they’re closest to. Ben’s dog (their dog, now — he’d loved her from the first minute they met, which she could tell was a relief to Ben) is there, and they marry by the side of a beautiful lake. All of the Losers are there.

They’re all recovering, in their own ways. Mike is travelling the country. Bill is writing again. And Eddie and Richie — well. Eddie left New York and moved to LA, with Richie. They haven’t talked about it to the others, but it’s clear enough to Bev what’s happening. They sit next to each other at the wedding, and as they all get steadily drunker at the reception, Bev notices that they’re essentially orbiting each other. They dance together and sit together. Richie’s hands keep drifting to Eddie’s shoulders and back and thigh. Eddie’s attuned to everything Richie does, mirroring him and leaning into him and smiling at him. It’s so sweet Bev can hardly stand it.

They’re all staying at an adorable wood-cabin style lodge, and the morning after, Bev gets up before Ben and finds Richie outside, drinking orange juice and looking out over the lake. He’s visibly hungover, and Bev probably is too, at least a bit.

“Headache?” she asks.

“I took Advil.” He leans against the railing — artistic, woodsy. It’s not his kind of place, but it works for Bev, and the rest of the Losers took it in stride. “I wanted to ask you something.”

“Sure.” She leans on the railing next to him. The view is truly spectacular.

He opens his mouth and then closes it. He reaches into his pocket and, instead of saying anything, hands a small box to her.

Bev is smiling as she opens it. Inside is, as she expected, a ring. A platinum band with a simple pattern on the outside. She lifts it out of the case and looks inside the band. In black letters, _ R+E _.

Richie looks like he’s going to say something, explain it, but can’t seem to find the words. Bev can’t stop herself from smiling as she puts the ring back and hands the box to Richie. He tucks it back into his jacket and looks away from her, back at the lodge. Back at Eddie.

“It’s perfect,” she says, when it becomes clear that he’s waiting for her to speak.

“I haven’t asked yet.”

“I don’t think you have anything to worry about,” she says. Because it’s true. She can see it on him and on Eddie, as clear as day.

“It’s not — well, it is. But I’m going to ask. I didn’t want to overshadow your wedding, but I wanted you guys here.”

“What are you waiting for, then?”

Richie blinks at her. “I don’t know.”

She grabs his arm and pulls him down to her level so she can kiss his cheek. She’s still smiling when she pulls back. She’s never been so happy: she’s married to a man she loves, she has the best friends she’s ever had by her side — at least for a few more days — and two of them are going to be as happy as she is, soon.

He pulls her into a short hug, pulls away, and touches the pocket holding the ring. “Go,” she tells him, shoving his arm, and he smiles, too. She’s never seen him look so happy.

She watches him leave. She can’t stop smiling.


End file.
